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Susan Rodgers

A Song for Josh

Synopsis

Music has the power to heal.
Discovered while busking on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Jessie Wheeler – once a teen runaway from Prince Edward Island - is now a popular singer-songwriter and actor. On the day her boyfriend Charlie proposes, he kicks an estranged friend - actor Josh Sawyer - out of his Club. Jessie sees something of herself reflected in Josh’s sorrowful chocolate brown eyes – a deep loneliness and angst. When a part on Josh’s new television series Drifters becomes available, Jessie can’t resist the temptation, despite the fact that taking the part threatens her engagement to Charlie. When a past nemesis, Deuce McCall, makes a tragic appearance in the city, Jessie’s turbulent past catches up with her, threatening any chance she has at a true and sustainable love.
A Song For Josh is a simple sweet story about hope and love, and the power of music to heal. Through Josh and Jessie’s story we learn that all of us damaged souls are indeed lovable, even when we are quite certain we are not.

Author Biography

Susan is a writer from beautiful Prince Edward Island, Canada. A finalist in the Atlantic Writing Awards, she recently self-published the first three books of the Drifters series (A Song For Josh, Promises, and No Greater Love) and is working on the fourth book, Riptide. Susan is also an avid filmmaker with a feature documentary in post-production and big dreams of producing a feature drama. Frequent visits to Vancouver for great coffee from her singer-songwriter / barista son Christopher are a must, as are summer sunsets on the south shore of P.E.I.

Author Insight

A Wilted Spirit

The loss of Jessie's father on her twelfth birthday marks the end of her childhood. This theme of loss is carried throughout all three books and in fact is one factor that drives the 'big' choice Jessie makes in Book Two, Promises. Jessie continues to see little rainbow prisms at times throughout her life - in the early mornings when the dew is fresh on the grass, or imbued in a rainy windowpane. They remind her that somewhere, somehow, her father is still with her. They give her strength. They give her hope.

Book Excerpt

A Song for Josh

As it emerged as breathlessly as its driver from the watery prison, she could see that it had picked up some lupins on its speedy, unstoppable journey down the hill. They hung there, not lively and bright and pink and purple anymore, proudly facing the world, but instead dripping and wilted like Jessie’s spirit would be forevermore.

The once beautiful lupins, as the dirty, thick cable arced the car gracefully over the hill, left miniscule traces of the water that had drowned her father on the lovely soft green grass below. Jessie would always remember those water droplets settling upon the grass, reflecting the magic hour light of popping oranges and reds, a light sought after by photographers and cinematographers the world over. Those droplets, life-blood of the river over which Jessie’s father had ridden like a knight gracefully dipping his paddles and undoubtedly singing as he cruised happily atop his future prison on this magical summer day, were about as part of the river now as Jessie’s beloved dad would be in her life – nothing more than fragile, faded, eerie, ethereal reflected light.